Chapter Text
Aerion saw the change pass through his kin before a word was spoken. Baelor had gone very still, which in him was its own sort of alarm. Maekar’s mouth set hard; he looked half a heartbeat from calling for steel.
Valarr had marked the toll collector by the hearth, but Aerion had known him for what he was the instant he spoke: some Redding creature, by the arms upon his surcoat, though not the lord himself. The cloth was too good for a common gatherer of coppers, the speech too practiced, the insolence too easy. Here was a man long used to being obeyed by those beneath him and shielded by those above. Aerion’s hand closed more firmly round the tally.
The parchment was cheap and much folded, its edges gone soft, the ink browned by damp or handling. A few lines had been set down in a clerk’s neat hand—figures, weights, sums—and at the bottom, pressed into black wax, was a dragon.
Daeron remained as placid as ever, which soothed Aerion somewhat; had his brother dreamt death in this, he would have fled the matter as neatly as he had fled the lists at Ashford.
Around them, the villagers did not move. If anything, they bent harder over their cups, their hands, the warped grain of the tables. The innkeep had gone pale beneath his smile.
Then Aerion saw them: two men near the door easing backward through the stillness, not running yet.
Baelor saw them at almost the same instant. His expression did not alter, but something in him closed.
“Bar the door,” he said quietly. “No word leaves this inn until I know in whose name it has been moving already.”
Maekar did not wait for obedience. “You,” he snapped at ser Donnel. “The door. Now. And if either of those men sets foot outside, lame them.”
Maekar turned then upon the Redding man.
“Whose man are you?” he asked.
The toll collector tried to draw himself up beneath the badge on his breast, but there was less of him in it now. “My prince, I serve at Lord Caswell’s pleasure—”
“You serve someone,” Maekar said. “That much is plain.”
Baelor stepped forward before the man could stammer out some fresh lie. His voice was calm, but all softness had gone from it now.
“This matter will be answered before Lord Caswell,” he said. “Not here. You will come with us, and you will bring your tally, your seal, and every account by which you have taken coin in an usurper’s name.”
The strip of black wax turned once between his fingers, and the crude three-headed dragon caught the candlelight. Ill-made thing. Ugly thing. The heads were wrong, the proportions worse. It insulted the eye almost as much as the treason insulted the blood.
“Before Lord Caswell?” he said. “How convenient for them all.”
“No one is to be judged here in fear and confusion,” Baelor said sharply. “An inn is no place for the king’s justice.”
“You think him alone on his treachery?” Aerion said, looking round the room. He still held the tally in one hand, the black seal swaying beneath it. “A man does not send riders out the door the moment he is discovered unless he has friends to warn and hands to help him warn them. This inn has been serving them from the first.”
The innkeep flinched as if struck. Around him the villagers seemed to shrink where they sat.
But Aerion was not looking at him now. He was looking at the innkeep, who had gone from pale to gray.
Valarr’s eyes went to the dais they had set for them. “That was swiftly done,” he said. “We gave little warning of our coming, yet they found a platform fit for princes almost before we had crossed the threshold.”
“The food came too quickly,” Aerion said softly. “The ale too. The beds promised before we had named our number. He has been eager to be rid of us since we crossed his threshold.”
The innkeep’s lips trembled. “No, my prince, no, I only meant—”
Aerion heard Ser Rolland curse under his breath. “They’d have had scouts,” the knight said. “Someone marked us on the road and warned the inn ahead.”
Maekar’s face darkened. His gaze swept the room like a blade. “This village has harbored treason from one end to the other,” he said. “This is no inn. It is a traitor’s nest.”
Aerion felt, for one brief instant, a fierce and private satisfaction. There was his father.
The innkeep made a broken noise in his throat and fell half to his knees, clutching at the edge of the nearest table as though it might keep him upright.
“I never took none,” he blurted. “I never touched the coin, m’prince. It went to Ser Alester. Ser Alester Flowers, that’s the Seven’s truth. He’s the one as had it.”
The Redding man had gone the color of curdled milk. His uncle turned to him, set his unnerving mismatched eyes on the man.
“You will speak plainly now, and if there is any grace to be found for you, it will be found in truth.”
Ser Alester was a landed knight, they said. A hard man, but clever. He had come with promises—silver for the innkeep, favor for the Redding man, advancement, protection, better custom, better standing. All they need do was keep their eyes open and their mouths shut. Coin taken at the crossing went where Ser Alester directed. Messages too. Provisions sometimes. Not always by the same hands. Beggars carried word where mounted men might be marked. Septrons and wandering brothers passed tidings more freely than soldiers. Merchants bore coin and small goods hidden amongst honest trade upon the Mander.
“To where?” Baelor asked.
Neither dared meet his eye.
“We do not know, Your Grace,” said the Redding man. “I swear it on my soul.”
“We were never told,” cried the innkeep. “Only that it was upriver, or down, as need be. We never had the naming of it.”
The innkeep all but stumbled over himself in his haste. “Your Grace, we never meant no harm by it, not to you, not to the king, I swear it—”
One merchant near the wall, broad in the belly and rich in dye, seemed to find his courage only once the worst had been said. He pressed both hands to his chest as though affront itself had made him pious.
“Your Grace,” he said to Baelor, “no guild worth the name would ever think to dishonor the king in such a fashion. If any merchant has lent himself to this, he has done so as a rogue and not by honest leave—”
“Spare me,” said Maekar.
The man stopped as if struck.
Maekar turned back to the Redding creature. “You,” he said. “Where do we find this Ser Alester?”
The fellow swallowed. His mouth worked once before sound came. “There is a holdfast, my prince. Half a day’s ride west of here, near the old ferry road. He comes and goes, but—”
“But?” Maekar said.
“But if word has not outrun us, he may still be there.”
May. A coward’s word, Aerion thought. Yet the man was shaking hard enough now that his teeth near chattered, so perhaps fear had at last stripped him down to honesty.
His father looked as if containment would be greatly eased by the hanging of three or four men before supper.
Ser Donnel stepped forward then, one hand on his sword belt. “Your Graces, with leave, Ser Rolland and I could ride for the holdfast at once. If this Ser Alester is there, we’ll have him before you by nightfall.”
“Or his head,” said Maekar.
Ser Donnel inclined his head. “Aye, my prince.”
Baelor’s gaze shifted to his brother. “No.”
Maekar turned on him at once. “Brother?”
“No heads,” said Baelor. “Not unless he leaves you no other choice.
Baelor went on as if no one had spoken. “If a man knows he may yield and be heard, he may yet bend the knee. If he thinks there is no hope but the sword, he will fight to the death and take what truth he knows with him.”
Aerion stared at him. Had father’s mace addled him? Treason, and his uncle spoke of being heard? A man took coin in a black dragon’s name, moved word and provisions through the Mander, set scouts upon the road to mark royal passage—and Baelor spoke as if the question were courtesy.
Or perhaps that was the trick of him. Other men called it goodness, this habit he had of making mercy sound kingly. Aerion had never been so certain.
“I will ride with Ser Donnel,” Aerion said.
Then Daeron gave a soft, disbelieving laugh. “What are you, a sandwich of stupidity?”
Aerion turned his head.
Daeron spread one hand, easy as you please. “I have just watched you drag yourself half-dead through a day’s ride out of spite and bad breeding. You are in no shape to fight anyone.”
“I am in better shape than most men born to it,” Aerion said.
“Undoubtedly,” said Daeron. “And should you fall off your horse before reaching the holdfast, I am sure Ser Alester will die of remorse.”
“This is the one thing we ought not do if we mean to settle this cleanly,” Valarr said. He did not raise his voice, but there was a firmness in it Aerion had always found particularly intolerable. “You are hurt, overtired, and angry. Even whole and rested, you are not exactly fitted for calm arrests and orderly testimony.”
Aerion smiled without warmth. “Say it plainly. I am too volatile.”
Valarr met his gaze. “Yes.”
For one bright instant Aerion hated him with perfect clarity.
Baelor spared him no rescue from it. “If Ser Alester yields more readily to a king’s peace than to a prince’s wrath, I mean to give him that chance.”
Maekar’s mouth hardened. “You’ve proved your courage for one day. I’ve no need to watch you prove your folly too.”
The hurt of it rose so fast it near choked him. Maekar, after all this day, after the pain and the blood and the long miles ridden half lame to prove that he was not broken. His father’s mouth refusal sounded perilously like unfitness. For one treacherous instant, Aerion thought he might shame himself before them all.
He swallowed it.
When he spoke, his voice was steady. “Then split the force.”
That won him a moment’s silence.
Baelor looked at him. “What?”
“You and my father must take these men to Lord Caswell,” Aerion said. “The steward, the innkeep, the merchants, whatever else this nest yields. They must be questioned at once, and in person, if you mean to know how far this reaches. But you cannot send both Ser Donnel and Ser Rolland after Flowers whilst Ser Wylde is still half-spoiled from Ashford and scarcely fit to guard a chicken coop.”
Maekar’s eyes narrowed, but Aerion pressed on.
“If this is more than one knight’s private greed—if it is insurgence, and not merely theft in a black dragon’s name—then it is dangerous to keep the party thin whilst you sit questioning peasants in a hall. Nor can you wait until morning. By dawn this Ser Alester will be gone.”
That, at least, landed. Aerion saw it in them: Baelor measuring it, Maekar resenting that it made sense, even Daeron sobering a little despite himself.
“I am injured,” Aerion said, before any of them could say it for him. “I know that. But I can still ride, and you need another man of rank and weight upon that road.”
Valarr spoke at once. “Then I will go.”
“This is small enough,” he said. “A handful of men with more ambition than sense. Let me ride out. Speak with them. Have it ended before it becomes something larger.”
Aerion turned on him so sharply his leg near betrayed him.
Of course. Valarr, whole-bodied and composed, with his easy authority and his infuriating talent for making usurpation look like service.
Then, from beside the wall, Aegon said, “Ser Duncan could go.”
The room paused.
Aegon looked from prince to prince, earnest as only a boy could be whilst proposing further disaster. “He’s strong enough,” he said. “Stronger than most. And if it comes to fighting—”
Aerion stared at him.
He felt the heat of it rise so fast it was almost dizzying. After everything—after the ride, after the pain, after tearing himself bloody to prove he was still of use—they would trust the giant brute.
“Of course,” he said. “A hedge knight. Why send a prince of the blood when we may dispatch the horse boy instead?”
Aegon flushed at once. “That’s not what I meant.”
“No?” Aerion said. “It sounded very like it.”
Baelor said, “Aerion—”
“No,” Aerion snapped, then checked himself. Too many eyes. Too many ears. He could feel the whole room leaning toward them without daring to seem it.
He stepped nearer instead, close enough that what followed need not carry beyond the circle of his kin and the sworn swords nearest them.
“This is folly,” he said, low and hard. “You would not even know of this whole nest of piss and treason if I had not seen it. I am going. You may all play at prudence behind me if you like, but I am going, and you cannot stop me.”
Valarr’s answer came just as quietly.
“Fair enough,” he said. “We cannot.”
Aerion felt, for one brief instant, a vicious flare of triumph.
Then Valarr looked past him.
“But he can.”
And pointed to Duncan.
The sickness came so swiftly Aerion thought for a moment he might truly disgrace himself. It seemed to hollow him from throat to belly all at once.
Not only that Valarr should say it. That was vile enough. But that he should say it so calmly, so easily, as if this too were only another lawful instrument to be taken up when required. As if the bond were not a horror and a humiliation, but merely one more means by which better men might rule him.
Aegon made a small, shocked sound. Even he looked stricken.
Duncan only stared. “What in seven hells is he talking about?”
Daeron answered before any of the others could.
Low. Cold. Angry now.
“He means,” he said, “that it is being suggested you use the bond to master him. As men once mastered dragons. By force of command.”
Duncan went white beneath the bruises.
Aerion dared a glance toward Maekar then, despite himself.
His father had gone pale as milk. There was something near sick in his face.
“No,” Duncan said at once.
Not loudly. But with such naked refusal in it that even Aerion blinked.
“No. I would not do that.”
Daeron’s eyes did not leave Duncan’s face.
“I’d never do that,” Duncan said, harsher now, as if the thought itself had offended him. “Never.”
Aerion felt it low in his chest, a slow tightening, as if some unseen hand had closed round a thing in him that was never meant to be held at all. It had been there before—on the road, in the dark between tents, in those strange instants when Duncan’s nearness seemed to press against him even in silence—but never so sharply as now.
If the oaf spoke the right way, with enough force behind it—
Aerion did not finish the thought. He would not.
Baelor did it for him, in another fashion.
“No,” his uncle said at once, before the silence could deepen into horror. His voice was not loud, but it cut clean through the moment. “No one is commanding anyone.”
Baelor stepped forward then, putting himself squarely at the center of it, between panic and possibility alike.
“That is not to be spoken of again,” he said. His gaze passed over Valarr, Daeron, Duncan, the guards who had heard too much, and at last came to Aerion. “Not here. Not by any man in this room.”
Aerion said nothing. He did not trust his own mouth.
Baelor’s tone shifted then, from warning to order.
“This is how it shall be. Valarr will go. Aerion will go. Ser Rolland and Ser Duncan with them, and enough guards to make seizure if need be. They will ride for Ser Alester’s holdfast at once and bring him in alive, if he can be taken so.”
Maekar’s jaw tightened, but he did not interrupt.
“My brother and I,” Baelor went on, “with Ser Donnel and the rest, will take these men to Bitterbridge and put the matter before Lord Caswell before rumor outruns us all. We are not here to reap half the Reach. We are here to settle this before it turns into something worse.”
Baelor’s eyes rested on him last of all. “No one will command you,” he said.
Baelor’s words settled over the room like a lid clapped down upon a boiling pot. No one looked easy for it, but men were already moving again, and movement at least was better than that still, sick silence.
Orders began to pass. Ser Donnel turned at once to the business of sorting men, pointing this one toward the prisoners, that one toward the horses, another toward the gathering of ledgers, purses, and whatever else might serve as proof before Lord Caswell. The innkeep, having emptied himself of courage and confession alike, looked fit to be sick where he knelt. The Redding man had gone dull-eyed, as if he had at last understood that there were roads down which no badge and no smooth tongue could carry him safely.
Aerion scarcely saw them.
He was too busy feeling Valarr’s presence draw nearer. His alpha scent was near intolerable now.
Not close enough to touch. Valarr was never so careless in company. Yet somehow Aerion felt him all the same, as one might feel the coming of rain before the first drop fell. His cousin said nothing at first, only stood beside him while servants and sworn men hurried past, and that silence was in its way more provoking than speech.
At the far end of the room, Duncan had not moved either. He still looked as if someone had struck him in the face with the flat of a shield. Good, Aerion thought. Let him choke on it. Let him feel a little of the ugliness he had dragged into the world.
Ser Rolland approached first, practical as ever. “Your Grace,” he said to Valarr, then to Aerion, with the smallest pause between the two titles, “we’ll want to ride light. If this Flowers means to bolt, speed will matter more than show.”
“Light, but not foolish. If the holdfast is better manned than this creature admits, I would sooner not discover it with six swords and a prayer.”
Ser Rolland inclined his head. “Aye, my prince.”
Behind him, Duncan had at last found his feet. He came nearer slowly, as though uncertain whether he was wanted, and looking very much as if he would rather face another trial of seven than one more word about bonds, dragons, or commands.
For one hateful moment Aerion thought of telling him not to bother. Thought of flaying him with his tongue before Valarr and the guards and the whole room. Thought of saying, You have done enough.
Instead he only watched.
The big lout stopped a little way off. “They said I’m to ride,” he said, and even now he sounded more bewildered than proud. “So I’ll ride.”
It was somehow intolerable that he should make obedience sound so plain. No grasping at honor. No swelling at trust shown him. Only that dull, monstrous steadiness of his, as if being asked to hunt down a traitor knight in princely company were no more than being told to fetch water.
Ser Rolland glanced at him, took his measure in one look, and seemed to find something serviceable there.
Servants came and went around them, carrying cloaks, waterskins, a bundle of torches, a satchel of bread gone hastily hard. One groom was dispatched limping toward the stables; another ran full tilt for the yard. Outside, horses whickered and stamped in the dark. The whole inn had become a kicked anthill.
Aerion drew breath too sharply and felt the pain in his leg at once, hot and mean and pulsing. The room swayed for half a heartbeat. He hated himself for it more than for the pain itself.
Then Aegon appeared between them, red-haired and furious and trying his hardest to look princely enough for both. “They’re bringing the horses round,” he said, glaring first at Aerion, then at Duncan, then at Valarr as if all three had disappointed him in separate and important ways. “And don’t start anything before you get there. That would be stupid.”
“Aegon,” said Valarr.
“It would,” Aegon insisted. “We already found the traitors. There’s no need to become more.”
Then he stalked off before any of them could answer, which at least proved he had spent enough time amongst princes to learn the value of a retreat made at speed.
Ser Rolland returned with two guards behind him and jerked his head toward the yard. “Now, Your Graces.”
Valarr moved first. Naturally. Men made way without his asking it. Aerion followed a pace behind, because to limp ahead and be seen doing it would have been worse than death. Duncan came last among them, broad as a door and twice as awkward, ducking his head beneath the lintel as though the inn itself might take offense at his size.
The night air struck cool against Aerion’s face. For an instant it helped. The yard beyond was a confusion of lantern light, mud, steaming horseflesh, and men hauling girths tight with half-frozen fingers. Somewhere off in the dark a prisoner was crying. Somewhere nearer, Maekar’s voice cracked like an axe through timber, and another man went silent at once.
Aerion’s horse was being held for him already. Held and waiting, as if everyone had already judged that he would need help mounting.
He went cold all over.
Duncan saw it at once. Curse him, he saw too much for a man who ought to have known nothing.
The lout stepped forward. “I won’t touch you,” he said quickly, low enough that only Aerion could hear. “Not unless you ask.”
Aerion looked at him.
He hated that too. Hated the care in it. Hated the patience. Hated most of all that some small, traitorous part of him had unclenched the moment the words were spoken.
Aerion set his hand on the saddle and said, without looking at Duncan, “Pray that I never do.”